The Rita Pal Case, Or You Can't Control The 'Net

Scientific Misconduct has an excellent post up about the Rita Pal case. For those of you who missed the fun here the other day, the background is right here. Since Aubrey Blumsohn is based in the UK, he appears to have even less patience for the British medical establishment than do I or many of you.

I am stunned by so many things in this case, particularly by the ignorance shown by the General Medical Council and the British Psychological Society of who the Internet works and how media works a bit differently on the 'Net. The short story is that once a document of some kind finds its way to the online world, then authorities--governmental and otherwise--generally lose control of said document (there are plenty of examples of this, including the Zyprexa documents case of the past year) and are on a fool's errand to try and put the horse back into the barn, as it were, and to try and intimidate people from leaking things to the 'Net in the future.

One bit of wisdom from Judge Weinstein's ruling on the Zyprexa documents back in February was the Judge's public acknowledgment that the Internet is about free speech and that it's a bad idea for judges to attempt to control such. Because their control of a medium that can be produced and published by literally anyone is very limited. To whit, the Blakemore-Brown transcript, which is at the center of the Pal/GMC fight, was downloaded by another 110 people in the last few days. Almost 1,000 people have now read what the BPS doesn't want them to read.

I'm just saying.